Red Hat Security Advisory: kernel-rt security, bug fix, and enhancement update

This Red Hat security advisory addresses multiple vulnerabilities in the kernel-rt packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, including CVE-2024-57849 and 13 others. The vulnerabilities include use-after-free bugs, out-of-bounds array accesses, permission mask issues, and a safe RET interrupt vulnerability. The affected kernel subsystems include CPU hotplug sampling on s390 architecture, PREEMPT_RT irq-context, network bonding, zram, pNFS, nfsd, NFSv4, mana network driver, RDMA/siw, AMD-SN-7061, and IPv6 routing. The advisory provides an update that fixes these issues and also includes bug fixes and enhancements. The update is rated as having an Important security impact by Red Hat Product Security. The advisory recommends applying the update and rebooting the system to activate the fixes.

The vulnerabilities fixed in this advisory could lead to use-after-free conditions, out-of-bounds memory writes, permission mask bypasses, and other kernel-level faults that may compromise system stability or security. Given the kernel's critical role, these issues could potentially be exploited to cause denial of service or privilege escalation, although no known exploits in the wild have been reported. The advisory rates the security impact as Important (high severity).

A security update for the kernel-rt packages is available from Red Hat for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (versions 8.0.0 through 8.10). Users should apply the update promptly and reboot their systems to ensure the fixes take effect. Red Hat recommends treating all kernel errata as security-relevant and advises against delaying updates. No additional mitigation steps are specified beyond applying the official update and rebooting.